By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter


The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) plans to establish a special committee to decide the scope of classified documents related to arms acquisition projects to be revealed, in a bid to meet the public’s right to know, a spokesman of the agency said on Tuesday.

The move came after the DAPA, which began its business on Jan. 2, was under fire for the leakage of confidential documents.

Under the so-called information open system, the agency will make public all information of procurement programs, such as the bidding and contact awarding process, online and offline, the spokesman said.

``The committee, which will also involve the representatives of civic groups, will closely examine the level of military confidentiality of the dossiers concerned before they are disclosed to the public,’’ Park Sung-soo at the agency’s public affairs office told The Korea Times.

Park said the agency would seek to ease regulations on documents classified as military secrets unless they undermine national security.

The agency ``mistakenly’’ posted a three-page dossier regarding the country’s mid- to long-term arms buildup programs classified as second and third military secrets on its official Website (www.dapa.go.kr) on Jan.3-4.

It deleted the contents 30 hours after the documents were posted, but about 250 arms purchases and development plans were found to have been already distributed via the Internet, officials at the Defense Ministry said.

Included in the plans of the leaked dossier was the Navy’s plan to build six 1,800-ton level Type 214 submarines between 2012 and 2020 and deploy three 3,500-ton class next-generation vessels in the field by 2020 in stages.

The documents also revealed that the country is seeking to build advanced fighter jets using its own technology beginning 2018, under the ``KF-X’’ program, which is in the last stage of a feasibility study by the state-run Agency for the Defense Development.

The Defense Security Command looked into the information leakage case, questioning some 10 DAPA officials concerned, and handed over the results of investigation to the National Intelligence Service, Park said.

Under the current law, military documents are classified into three categories according to their contents. Nine of 538,000 secret documents are classified as first-class secrets. About 235,600 belong to the second class and some 308,100 to the third.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr